A leading acquirer where innovation matters

Worldpay Senior Vice President Chester Ritchie believes fraud in the payment processing industry, which costs billions of dollars every year, is a problem that deserves serious attention. "If you think about restaurants today, we're all pretty trusting, right?" he said. "We present our credit card and watch it walk away behind a closed door somewhere. Who knows what's going on? That is where most of the fraud in the United States comes from actually; most people don't even know that."

On Oct. 1, 2015, the U.S. adoption of Europay, MasterCard and Visa (EMV) technology will enter a new phase. At that time, merchants unequipped to accept EMV cards can be liable for the costs of fraudulent transactions processed through their POSs, according to criteria established by the major card brands. EMV cards contain smart chips that encrypt customer data during transactions, making them more secure and more difficult to counterfeit than mag stripe cards.

Ritchie said, "One of the reasons why Canada implemented EMV was to migrate their fraud elsewhere, that is, to the United States, because we are the last country that does not have EMV."

World-class functionality, easy to install

Worldpay said it has implemented more EMV solutions than any other processing company in the world. The company provides customers with software development kits and application programming interfaces that require simply copying and pasting computer code into an existing application, enabling customers to be up and running quickly.

"It's a super easy solution that a developer can just go out on the web, download it or 'snip it', then paste it into their code and then they have their payments integrated," Ritchie said.

Unparalleled offerings, speedy deposits

Worldpay was founded in 1989 and prides itself on being the third-largest payment processing company worldwide today. It boasts an impressive roster of Fortune 500 customers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Google Inc., Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Bigcommerce Pty. Ltd., Yahoo Inc., and eBay Inc. Ritchie believes a reason for the company's success is it ability to offer 250 payment types in 120 different currencies across the globe for multiple channels, including e-commerce, in-store, online and mobile payments.

Customers managing retail businesses have next-day access to sales revenue when using the Worldpay platform. "All of your sales from the weekend that come from credit cards, we can have them deposited into your bank account come Monday," Ritchie said. "We are able to capture a lot of business because in the restaurant space the margins are literally razor thin."

Focus on innovation, promising startups

Worldpay is investing in the future by partnering with up-and-coming incubators and startups. "One of the ways that we are trying to help is we have actually pledged money and executive leadership to Georgia Tech's Incubator," Ritchie said. "It's called the Advanced Technology Development Center. We are in there daily helping small startups bring their solutions to market with the payments technology embedded into it."

Ritchie believes true innovation in business does not always come from large companies. "That is where the innovation is going to come from, these small, little startups that have five to 10 guys and a great idea and they got a cool solution like an Uber, but they need someone to help them both financially and from an executive oversight.

"We are working on that today, and I hope we continue to see other processors and acquirers funding things like that, because trying to ask an old legacy company, and most of these banks are, innovation never comes from those guys. It always comes from these smaller guys. It would be nice to see more players jump in and help fund and really direct some of these startups that are out there."

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